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Macy's street musician (Photo credit: Photos by Mavis)

My potent leading indicator for 2014 is auspicious. On Thanksgiving Day, outside my windows streamed Macy’s parade. I pointed at Santa driving his reindeer down Central Park West and Santa waved back, arms outstretched. Each year we connect, the market rises at least 10 percent.

The market stands starved for growth. Scrolling down the top 100 names by market capitalization reveals an outperformance pattern centered on growthies. Google, Amazon and Priceline.com are standouts, year to date, along with Gilead Sciences, Celgene and Biogen Idec. I missed gut plays like Hewlett-Packard, up 75%. Even Microsoft rose 38% despite all its operating cross currents and negative commentary.

Sosnoff’s axiom holds true: The price of a stock varies inversely with the thickness of its research file. In technology, a big disappointment, my files runneth over. Analysts missed the slowdown in government spending and the impact of cloud computing software on hardware operators.

Financials surprised me. I thought major properties like Wells Fargo, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway waxed buoyant but they're just market performers. Big scorers were lesser names like MasterCard, American Express, Morgan Stanley, MetLife and Prudential Financial, all under sponsored by the Street’s analysts.

Industrials like General Electric did the market, along with Union Pacific and General Motors. DuPont and Danaher did better, Monsanto worse along with Dow Chemical. A handful of stocks make the “big surprise” renewed recognition category: Boeing, Federal Express, Lockheed Martin, BlackRock, 3M Company, 21st Century Fox, Nike, Starbucks, Walgreens, Lowes and Walt Disney.

This rearview mirror gazing forms the basis for doping out what's ahead in 2014. After weighing leading economic indicators and considering Federal Reserve Board policy emphasis and government spending cutbacks, it's a press to project reacceleration in GDP, rising consumer spending, better unemployment stats, a turnaround in industrial capital spending, even dramatic improvement in housing activity.

Is the Federal Reserve Board whistling in the dark, projecting accelerating GDP momentum next year and in 2015? They perceive a pickup in new orders for capital goods, but nothing spiky. Then, more fiscal spending kicks in with rising consumer sentiment and greater credit availability by banks. These are politicized and fuzzy indicators, possibles but not factoids.

Any bullish forecast for the economy needs to focus on consumer spending, which after all, approximates 70% of GDP. Low interest rates, easing of debt burdens, declining gasoline prices and higher household wealth are plus factors, but unemployment statistics cast their long shadows on consumer sentiment.

When you factor in the decline in the labor force participation rate, unemployment in the country is grossly understated. How many 55-year-old ex-bank vice presidents ever get called back? Manufacturing employment in the country goes nowhere. Capacity utilization for industry sits at 78%, a near recession number suggesting enormous slack in the country's manufacturing wherewithal.

The best I come up with for 2014 is operating profit margins at major corporations hold up, but won't rise unless topline growth reaccelerates. Employment costs stay contained along with the cost of capital. The poor performance last year for non-industrial properties like Coca-Cola, Philip Morris International, Wal-Mart, McDonald's and Target indicates market impatience with pricey weak topline revenue producers.

No interest in polite plays - utilities and telecommunications. Properties like AT&T go nowhere. For oil producers, there's no upside leverage in energy quotes, particularly if the embargo on Iran is even partially lifted and then Iraqi and Libyan oil production recovers. Oil, like other commodities, holds in a surplus supply condition.

In a slow growth world setting there's no price leverage in coal, iron ore, copper and oil. Such desuetude eliminates materials and energy as prospective overweight sectors, some 17% of the S&P 500 Index.

No wonder the market is embracing a “growth at almost any price” equity construct. Warren Buffett could be sitting with a dead man's hand, major positions in Coca-Cola, IBM and Exxon Mobil. Offsetting is extreme overweighting in financials like American Express and Wells Fargo, understandable legacy holdings.